For most of our history, Americans have felt a deep-seated inferiority in the face of European high art, and most patriotic Americans have believed a complete break from European influence was required in order to develop a distinctive and distinguished American music. Barbara Tischler takes the opposite position: this country’s concert music composers did not succeed in writing music that was respected here and abroad until they involved themselves in the international movement to free music from its nineteenth-century Romantic constraints. This book is a fascinating portrait of American concert music and how it has evolved into the major cultural force that it is today.